Bondora has reported that it will not be opening an office in London due to post-Brexit effects; instead it will open a new office in Germany; Bondora CEO, Partel Tomberg, says he is uncertain about European market access in London; Bondora CFO says German regulators including Bafin are increasingly opening up to supporting innovation in the financial sector. Source
Wirecard is a German payments provider that has helped to set up the current boom in fintech and banking apps in Britain; Wirecard is seen as the infrastructure behind many fintech startups that have raised hundreds of millions of pounds in the UK; companies use Wirecard to sublet their banking license and because they are able to issue cards from Visa and Mastercard. Source
Germany's Federal Ministry of Finance has published a report on the emerging fintech sector; the report finds 433 fintech companies with 346 of the companies actively in business; robo advice had the highest annual growth rate; of the 433 firms, 13 were crowdlending companies with nine of the platforms actively in business; other highlights include transaction volume by segment and industry growth rates. Source
Fidor Bank saw in 2016 that incumbent banks were beginning to buy up and partner with fintechs because they needed to stay competitive; other digital banks do not share this view as Starling Bank issued a report back in September saying that collaboration with main street type banks will help to erode what fintechs are attempting to disrupt; 2017 looks to be a pivotal year for partnerships as big banks, regional banks and community banks are all moving in the direction of utilizing different aspects of new innovation. Source
According to P2P-Banking, Lendico has stopped originating consumer loans in Germany; website is referring consumer loan borrowers to Finanzcheck, but the company is still offering business loans in Germany; company has also ended consumer loans in the Netherlands and stopped new loan originations in Brazil and South Africa; recent activity from the firm includes an announcement last week regarding a joint venture with Postfinance in Switzerland. Source
Marketplace lender, Bitbond, has been an industry leader, providing the first global P2P lending platform for small businesses and now known as the world's first P2P lender allowing transactions with digital currency; Radoslav Albrecht, Bitbond's founder, sees digital currency, and specifically Bitcoin, as an opportunity to expand lending availability to borrowers and help returns for investors; Bitbond is able to offer digital currency transactions through its licensing from the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority which took three years and required in-depth investigation of the company's operations including their know your customer and anti-money laundering procedures. Source
Germany's central bank is hosting a blockchain workshop as an increasing number of central banks are exploring the use of blockchain; the event is titled, "Blockchain Technology - Opportunities and Challenges"; discussions will be focused primarily for central bankers and regulators; topics will include the success of blockchain, business cases for the technology and the use of bitcoin; workshop participants include European central bankers, European Union Parliament members, financial institution executives, individuals from academia and representatives from blockchain-based companies. Source
Germany's central bank is testing the use of blockchain technology in securities settlement; the central bank has partnered with Deutsche Börse to build a prototype; the prototype system is expected to be able to transfer electronic securities and digital coins also performing functions for coupon payments and redemptions of securities. Source
Initially a German-only digital bank, N26 is now expanding to 17 countries across the continent including Spain, Italy, Greece, Ireland and Slovakia; according to Valentin Stalf, founder and CEO of N26, the company is looking at "disrupting retail banking further" with this expansion; the digital bank offers an eight minute signup process, real time money transfers and budgeting tools; in coming years they are looking to add new products like investments, savings, insurance products and artificial intelligence based features. Source
N26 is a smartphone only bank that was originally launched in Germany and has big backers like Peter Thiel behind it; Vincent Haupert, a PhD student at the University of Erlangen-Nuernberg, told the Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg how he and two colleagues found N26 security defenses riddled with holes that could have been used to defraud thousands of users; Haupert presented his findings to the bank and they have since stated that the issues found have been addressed. Source